Jane Steele(78)

At length, I simply hid the volatile missive in my bedchamber; I did not want it now, could not even look at it calmly, but I could not read my future in my teacup either. The remainder of the day was uneventful, closed by a hesitant spill of Scotch I poured for myself in the spreading silence and an hour spent in my bed over a book of Irish poems.

I ought to have been grateful for the tranquillity; tragedy would not strike upon that night, as it happened, until one o’clock in the morning.

? ? ?

There was no sound at first, merely a sense; I snapped awake, feeling him downstairs, my eyes stuffed with sleepy cotton.

Dread crawled over my skin an instant later when an unknown object audibly shattered.

When I remember these swift seconds, I was up almost before the china had finished splintering, knowing that Mr. Singh could never be so clumsy and that if Mr. Thornfield had staggered and fell, then he must be drunk, and it was my responsibility to see he was not hurt, for I must have been the one who hurt him; and even if what I was telling myself was nonsense I still yearned to be near him in every capacity, so I threw my dressing gown on and slipped my small knife into its pocket and flew for the ground floor.

If it sounds foolish to race towards a clumsy housebreaker, I had ample reason; Mr. Thornfield was all I had thought of for weeks of fever dreams and halfhearted plotting, and even if we were both poorly stitched together creatures made of scar tissue and regrets, I wanted only to find a way to live in his world more fully. So I tumbled into the front hall and came face-to-face with the remains of a vase and a man unlike any I had ever previously met.

I could not tell what race he was, for his eyes were dark and his skin burnished, side-whiskers bright red in the light of his portable lamp; his trousers boasted a loud check pattern and his secondhand coat was wine-coloured velvet. He swayed, emitting acrid whiskey clouds as he panted like the lousiest Company cur north of Calcutta, as Mr. Thornfield would have put it.

Unfortunately, Mr. Thornfield was not present.

“What are ye?” the ruffian snarled, sounding pleased.

The accent was nigh-impossible to parse, but I thought it might have been the result of a Scottish lilt applied to already-musical Indian intonations.

“The governess.”

I considered screaming for once in my life; but Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield, who slept on the same floor I did, were from home, and the servants inhabited another wing. Apart from Sahjara three doors down from my bedroom, whom I prayed would not come downstairs, I was alone.

“D’ye always keep such midnight hours?” he purred, revealing yellowed teeth.

“Get away from here! I’ll call the master of the house.”

He slanted a canny look at me. “And why haven’t ye already? I suspect he ain’t here to come when ye do shout.”

Morbidity is not the same as stupidity, so I wheeled and made for the kitchen, intending to shriek my face off for whichever Singh or Kaur could hear me; but I found my throat caught in a vise, hashish-laden breath creeping across my cheekbones.

“I meant t’ question the half-bred lass, but ye might be a sight better,” the rotting relic of foreign wars spoke in my ear. “Tell me now where the trunk is and ye can sleep sound and safe.”

“They don’t have it!” I choked. “Let me go!”

How long we wrestled in that entryway I cannot recall, though I know I landed a number of ineffective blows. I was once more a being of edges and angles, fighting viciously to preserve not only the little girl upstairs I hoped was not roused by our clamour but the woman downstairs, making it.

“That’s the most whoreson lie I’ve heard since leaving Delhi,” his fat lips spoke against my ear.

Howling now, though to no one in particular, I fought to free my hands; he had caught both under one burly sweat-smelling arm.

If I could get to my knife.

I can get to my knife.

I will get to my knife.

Laughing in cruel wheezes like the rasp of a hacksaw, he shoved me facedown over the arm of the sofa in the drawing room after he had dragged me there, filling my nose with sweat and leather and lust, and I knew what happened next, had already faced the prospect. His bones bruised my wrists where they were pinioned, his other hand clumsily jostling at my skirts as he raised them.

“D’ye squeal like cows hereabouts, or just eat ’em?” he asked, rancid teeth brushing my neck.

I heard the approach of measured footsteps on the drive, and the front door opening.

Reader: I screamed, and if I could have screamed loud enough, I would have pierced him clean through.

“Damn ye straight t’ hell,” he growled.

A scorching pain blazed through my head as my assailant seized me by the follicles and led me into the shadows of the large chamber; the noises from the hall ceased.

“I’ll see the whole lot o’ ye vipers in hell,” my captor hissed.

He pressed pocket-warm metal against my gullet, and I had no choice save to follow as he dragged me by the scalp. When Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh burst into the room, I yet supposed the weapon a dull knife, but after the brute brandished the thing, I saw that it was a pistol in his hand.

Upon glimpsing my assailant, both men’s faces distorted as if a sword had met their bellies.

“How is it possible you’re yet alive?” Mr. Thornfield cried, unsheathing the blade he carried.

“Oh, aye, always so shocked when the rent comes due,” crooned the man holding me hostage. “Give me the small one who knows where the bounty is buried—or else the trunk, better still—and we’ll argue nae further.”